Amputee and paralysed British soldiers get back into sport at US Olympic training camp

When this soldier lost his legs in combat he thought it was his 'last day on
Earth’. Yet just 15 months later he’s developed a new passion: sprinting. At
an Olympics training camp in California, David Harrison watches disabled
British servicemen rediscover their bodies – and their pride
.

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Pte Derek Derenalagi 'I've got no legs but I can run. I never thought it would be possible'
Photo: ANTHONY UPTON

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Arthur 'Bungy' Williams, during a training session on a racing wheelchair at the Military Sports campPhoto: ANTHONY UPTON

1:01PM GMT 09 Jan 2009

The soldiers arrived in a Land Rover just as the sun was nudging over the horizon. It was 6.23am, the dawn of another searingly hot July day in Afghanistan’s dusty and desolate Helmand province. The troops’ mission was to clear a remote site where a Chinook helicopter was about to land to pick up a commanding officer of the 2 Mercian Regiment. Private Derek Derenalagi, a strong, stocky 33-year-old, was at the back of the first vehicle, manning the machinegun, watching out for any sign of a Taliban ambush.

The driver wanted to give the gunner a good view over the mountainous terrain, so he reversed into what seemed to be the best spot. Suddenly Pte Derenalagi was hurtling through the air.

''There was this massive explosion and I was thrown 30 yards from the Land Rover,’’ says Pte Derenalagi, from Bushey, Hertfordshire. “I landed on some rocks. The pain was indescribable. I managed to lift my head a bit and I saw I was lying in a pool of blood. My body armour, my helmet and webbing had all been blown off. Then I saw my right leg wasn’t there, and my left leg was badly burned and hanging on by just a few strands. My left boot was facing the wrong way.’’

The vehicle’s right tyre had come to a halt on an anti-tank mine, containing hundreds of nails and pieces of metal. “I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face,’’ says Derek, “but I thought this was my last day on Earth.” He said a prayer. “Lord, if you have a role for me in the future, to be an inspiration for others, then you will let me live. But whatever happens I thank you for my life.’’

After half an hour, as blood seeped out of his mouth onto the dry rocks, Derek heard people shouting his name. “The soldiers in the vehicle behind dragged me to safety but they didn’t realise that I had broken my collarbone and my spine. I was in agony.” After 20 minutes a helicopter came and took him to a field hospital where doctors amputated what was left of his legs.

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''I could hear the nurse’s voice. Like a voice in a tunnel, echoing,” he says. “She was saying: 'Be strong Derek. You will be OK.’ But I passed out when they amputated the second leg and they told the regiment that I had died.’’

In fact Derek had fallen into a coma. He was flown to the UK and, nine days later, he woke up in Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham, where many of Britain’s war wounded are treated. His wife Anna, 34, was at his bedside. “I was confused because I thought I was still in Afghanistan,” he says. “Anna was crying. I said I was hot and wanted to take my boots off. Then I said I wanted to go to the lavatory. 'You can’t go to the lavatory,’ she said. 'Why not?’ I asked. She couldn’t answer. Instead she took out her phone and took a photograph and showed it to me. I saw that I had no legs. 'This is how you are now,’ she said.

''That was the lowest point of my life. Anna was in a terrible state. We knew our lives would never be the same again and we didn’t know if we would be able to cope. All our plans, all our dreams were in ruins.’’

Just 15 months later Derek is in another hot place not long after sunrise. This time the venue is not the killing fields of Afghanistan but the rolling hills of southern California. The soldier who thought he would die on the rocks of Helmand province is on the athletics track at the US national Olympic Training Centre at Chula Vista, near San Diego, running swiftly and strongly thanks to a pair of futuristic prosthetic “blades” that glint in the Californian sun.

He finishes his sprint and, trackside, pulls the blades from the sockets in his stumps and places them against a wall. “I can run,” he says with a huge grin, his dark eyes dancing as he catches his breath. “I never thought it would be possible. I’ve got no legs but I can run.’’

Derek is one of six members of the British armed forces – four soldiers, one RAF weapons engineer and a Royal Marine – chosen to develop their sporting prowess by spending a week at training camps in California. The Americans started a programme to help wounded soldiers get into – or back into – sport in 2004. Britain, four years behind, launched its Battle Back programme in June last year as part of the Ministry of Defence’s rehabilitation programme for wounded soldiers at Headley Court in Surrey.

The six British servicemen were supremely fit young men until they lost limbs or were partly paralysed while serving in the armed forces, all but one in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all in 2007. “We picked them from 12 candidates,” says Major Martin Colclough, the paternal British Army fitness instructor, as he watches his proteges try out their skills at seated volleyball at the US naval medical centre in San Diego. “We were looking for sporting ability but also a strong mental attitude that will help them cope with the highs and the lows.’’

Some may take their sporting talent further. The six were invited to San Diego to train with more than 40 American disabled athletes at the national Olympic centre and other venues under the eyes of Olympian and Paralympian coaches and athletes. The best of them will be given the chance to do more training and could eventually be selected to compete for Great Britain at the Paralympics in London in 2012.

But scaling Paralympian heights is not the priority, says Major Colclough. “Obviously it would be fantastic if even one of them made London 2012. But the main aim is to use sport to give these guys new motivation, goals and satisfaction. They have been through serious physical and emotional trauma. Their lives have been turned upside down. Sport can help them to recover from that and give their lives new purpose.’’

It’s uplifting watching them. Pte Derenalagi not only sprints in his blades but his powerful torso helps him to throw a mean shot-putt and discus.

A 22-year-old Marine, Arthur “Bungy” Williams, paralysed from the stomach down in a road accident on his way back to camp in Worcestershire, excels at wheelchair-racing. Senior Aircraftsman Jon-Allen Butterworth, 22, who lost an arm to a rocket in Iraq, speeds round the cycling track in San Diego’s Balboa park. Lance Corporal Rory Mackenzie, 26, a former paratrooper, and Lance Corporal Adam Ball, 23, a Grenadier Guardsman, who lost a leg in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, and Lance Corporal Jon Le Galloudec, 28, shot in the spine in Iraq, emerge as strong swimmers.

Their joy at discovering what their disabled bodies are capable of is tangible. “I never thought I would still be a good swimmer with a missing leg,” says L/Cpl Ball, from Swadlingcote in Derbyshire. “And to think there are many able-bodied people who can’t swim at all.’’

The Americans are impressed. “Hey!” shouts a discus coach at the Olympic centre. “We’ve got some pretty good discus throwers here. Only problem is they’re all Brits.’’

There’s a steady stream of Anglo-American squaddie banter, sometimes strong, occasionally crude, but always affectionate: these soldiers fought on the same side, suffered similar injuries and are striving towards common goals. “When are you Brits gonna learn to play volleyball properly?” says one US athlete as a British soldier hits the ball weakly into the net. “When you Yanks learn how to talk properly,” comes the riposte.

The Brits also banter constantly among themselves, usually with black humour. We go out for a drink, to a bar on Coronado Island off the San Diego coast. Bungy Williams, a quick-witted Marine with boyish looks, turns to Rory, a strapping South African-born ex-paratrooper who joined the medical corps and lost his leg in a roadside bomb three months after arriving in Iraq in January 2007. ''Come on hopalong, get a round in,” says Bungy, with an impish grin. ''Don’t rush me, cripple,” Rory fires back. ''Come on,” says Bungy, “let’s all get legless tonight.’’

Lance Corporal Le Galloudec, a slim, dark-haired soldier nicknamed “Frenchie” – his name originates from Jersey – was shot in the spine when he and three other soldiers patrolling in a Land Rover were ambushed by insurgents in north Basra in June 2007. “It was about 2am and we went to investigate a report that 15 armed insurgents were holed up in a house,” he tells me, during a break between the shot-putt and the discus.

''When we got there the house was empty. Two of us got out to search the area. Suddenly there was a burst of gunfire. I was hit by a gunman 30 yards away. The other lads shouted 'Man down, man down!’ I was paralysed from the waist down. My body armour saved my life because it slowed the bullet down and stopped it shattering my spine.’

Under heavy fire, two colleagues tried to drag him to safety. But the commander, Corporal Rodney Wilson, a close friend of L/Cpl Le Galloudec, was shot in the chest and killed. The rescue had to be abandoned.

''I was lying there for about half an hour,” L/Cpl Le Galloudec recalls. “I was conscious throughout but I pretended to be dead. I didn’t feel scared but I thought I would turn my rifle on myself rather than let the enemy take me. I had promised my wife Carrie that I would be home. Now I thought I wouldn’t make it and I whispered, “I’m sorry, Carrie. I love you. Goodbye.’’

He felt a tap on the shoulder: soldiers from another platoon. “They took me into a house to treat my wounds and told me that Rodney had died. We were still being shot at as I was taken away to the base at Basra airport. Rodney was in a body bag. He had died trying to save my life. I was devastated.’’

L/Cpl Le Galloudec was flown to Selly Oak Hospital. “I called my mum and told her I’d been shot. She screamed and dropped the phone. I passed out. When I woke up, flat on my back with tubes all over me, my mum and Carrie were there.’’

Only then did Frenchie, a bright, quietly spoken man with a wry sense of humour, learn the full extent of his injuries: his spine was damaged, he was paralysed and had suffered permanent damage to his bladder, bowel and stomach. “They said I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I thought my life was over, that I had died in Iraq."

Like most of the other wounded soldiers he went to Headley Court for physiotherapy, help with prosthetics and counselling. “The hardest bits are coming to terms with the disability and trying to keep your home life together,” L/Cpl Le Galloudec says. “It’s tough and it made me angry. You have to fight through it. And you have to remember that your partner is going through it all too. I didn’t cope too brilliantly at first but Carrie has been amazing.’’

The other injured servicemen also felt a burning, explosive anger. “I would fly off the handle for the slightest reason,” says Bungy Williams. “I had gone from being a signaller on HMS Albion, part of the Royal Marines’ 6 Assault squadron, and loving every minute, to being in a wheelchair. I hated it, and I would lose it over the slightest things. Silly things, like if the wheelchair caught on the end of the carpet I would start shouting and swearing.’’

L/Cpl Rory Mackenzie says he took it out on those closest to him. “I would shout at my mother when she was driving, criticising the slightest thing. I was furious about what had happened to me. I used to do lots of sport: rugby, rock-climbing, cycling. I was at my peak and now I felt my life was over.’’

The troops speak of their struggle to avoid the “dark place” that awaits those who fail to accept their disabilities and forge a new life. The spell in hospital is particularly grim, when the wounded emerge from a haze of morphine to discover what they have lost. “Some of the lads in hospital when I was there said they couldn’t go on,” says Bungy. “They talked about going to Switzerland for an assisted suicide, or even topping themselves. I don’t know anyone who did that but some soldiers can’t cope with the loss.” The Marine, supported by his girlfriend and family, refused to go under. “The Marines training helped,” he says. “It taught me to face challenges. I wanted to crack it. I want to be the most normal cripple out there.”

L/Cpl Mackenzie says sport “stops you becoming fat and lazy, sitting in a wheelchair and moaning and groaning. You have to accept that you are physically different but mentally you can be more robust. You need help though. You can’t do it on your own.”

The British servicemen are inspired by their American mentors. The US programme was launched after John Register, a first Gulf War veteran, started a basketball “clinic” at Walter Reed army medical centre in April 2004. The aim was to use sport more effectively in the rehabilitation of injured servicemen and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The scheme has been a great success. Last year 16 disabled soldiers competed in the Beijing Paralympics, winning 10 medals.

Mr Register, the director of the US Olympic committee’s community and military programme, was himself an Olympic triallist in 1988 and 1992. He seemed destined to compete in the 1996 Olympics when he landed badly after going over a hurdle in 1994 and severed an artery. Gangrene set in and his left leg was amputated.

“It was devastating at first,” he says, casting an eye over the British soldiers at the training camp. “There was a heartbreaking moment when I got home and my five-year-old son said, 'Dad, let’s run down to the river,’ something we used to do regularly. I had to say to him: 'I can’t run right now son.’ I broke down and said to my wife Alice, 'I can’t do this.’ She said we would get through it together and that was my turning point. I had lost a leg but I was still a husband and a father. I had to get on with my life.’’

The former soldier, who invited the Brits to San Diego, got back into sport too, and, in 1996, just 18 months after the accident, he competed in the 4x100m medley relay final at the Paralympic Games in Atlanta. Four years later, at the Paralympics in Sydney, he won a silver medal in the long jump and finished fifth in both the 100m and 200m sprints. “The three Fs got me through,” he says. “Faith, family and friendships.’’

Mr Register's wife played a crucial role in his recovery but the British servicemen admit that trying to cope with their disabilities puts their relationships with wives and girlfriends under enormous strain. “All six of the British guys are now in stable relationships and that really helps,” says Major Colclough. “But it takes tremendous love and determination to get through something as life-changing as losing limbs or use of your lower body.’’

Physical intimacy is more difficult, and sex is sometimes impossible, depending on the extent of the injury and the sensibility of the partner. But studies have shown that having sexual relations is more important to many disabled people than walking again. As one British squaddie tells me candidly: “You worry about how your girlfriend will react. Will she want to sleep with a cripple? If you’re single you think you’ll never be able to meet a girl again, go on dates or get laid. A lot of girls would never look at an amputee but, once you get back out there, it’s not always as bad as you thought it would be.’

Another soldier says: “Let’s be honest, even if you’ve got all your bits it’s never going to be the way it was. But if you really love somebody you can get over that. You have to use your imagination a bit more."

Bungy Williams met his girlfriend Lucy, a 20-year-old nurse, after the road accident that left him paralysed from the stomach down. The crop-haired Marine had gone in his wheelchair to a nightclub with his four protective brothers. “After the accident I thought I’d never have a girlfriend again,” he says, gazing towards the lake beyond the track where he has just finished a wheel-chair race. “But me and Lucy just got chatting. We had a laugh. She accepts me for who I am. She’s the best thing that could have happened to me.”

Pte Derenalagi, who was born in Fiji and joined the British Army in 2000, admits that he and his wife had to do “a lot of soul-searching” to come to terms with his disability. “Suddenly she thought her only future was as a full-time carer,” he says, sitting by the swimming pool at the US navy centre. The couple’s 18-year-old daughter Anna simply couldn’t deal with it and went to Fiji to stay with relatives. “She used to come and watch me play rugby and seeing me with no legs was too much for her,” says Derenalagi.

''I was in tears when I first came back from hospital and had to bum-shuffle around the house. I used to play rugby for Staines and for my regiment, but I couldn’t do even simple things any more.’

Five weeks at Headley Court helped a lot, he says. He has conventional metal prosthetics but also has two cylindrical black stumps about two-feet long, like fat liquorice sticks, which he puts on when he is in the garden or pottering around the house. “By the end of my first week at Headley Court I was standing on my stumps and the doctors were amazed,” he says, smiling.

When he came back from Headley Court he and his wife “talked and talked” about their future. “I said to her: 'We have to forget what happened and forgive those who did it. I was injured doing something I loved. We lost nine of our men on our tour in Helmand. At least I’m alive. We should be grateful for that’.”

Artificial limbs are important to the soldiers’ physical and psychological recovery. L/Cpl Ball lost his leg up to the top of the thigh and was worried that there would not be enough “stump” to attach an artificial leg. The experts found a way and he is now the proud owner of a prosthesis with the thigh section in military camouflage colours. After a swimming session he leans the leg against a sun lounger. “It can get a bit sore if I have it on all the time,” he says. “But I’m used to it now. I wear shorts when it’s warm and people look at me a lot and I get the odd comment, but it doesn’t bother me.” Like others who have lost limbs L/Cpl Ball also suffers phantom pains, an illusion that the missing limb is sore or itchy, giving them the fleeting feeling that the leg or arm is still there. “I still go to cross my legs sometimes,” he says.

Out on the cycle track in San Diego, SAC Butterworth, who lost his left arm in a Taliban rocket attack in Basra in August 2007, is having a tough time. The tall, fair-haired 22-year-old RAF weapons engineer pulls up after cycling just 30 yards. “It’s too hard with one arm,” he says. He tries again, this time with his artificial arm hooked onto the bike’s handlebars. But the hook keeps slipping, affecting his balance. “Cycling is what I came out here to do,” he says, his face flushed with anger.

Technology comes to his rescue. Greta Neimanas, 20, a talented American Paralympic cyclist who came fourth in the 25km road time trial and fifth in the individual pursuit in Beijing, lends Jon a special fitting to connect his prosthetic arm to the handlebars. A few hours later Jon comes third in a race, beaten only by two experienced able-bodied cyclists. “I’m back on track,” he says, with a big smile.

L/Cpl Le Galloudec was fitted with strong splints to keep his feet at 90 degrees to his legs. The splints enable him to walk with the aid of a stick; when he takes them off he needs a wheelchair. He received £38,000 compensation from the Government but is fighting for more. “The compensation is for the injury but they’ve given me nothing for the disability and the pain that I will have for the rest of my life,” he says. Frenchie is proud, however, of his progress. “They said I’d never walk again, but I did,” he says. “They said I wouldn’t run or ride a bike again, but I can.” He is already back with 4th Battalion The Rifles, formerly the Green Jackets, in Salisbury, and is confident that he’ll be able to deploy on military operations in a year or two. “I’ll never be able to run around with a gun again but I’ve done 10 years of that,” he says. “I’d be happy to do anything, preferably intelligence work. I love being part of the military world.’’

The servicemen admit they still have “down moments", when the scale of their loss comes back to them with frightening clarity. In the gym at Chula Vista, Bungy Williams uses his muscular torso to haul himself up a rope with startling ease. A Royal Marines tattoo adorns a sizeable bicep. But when he comes down he looks sad.

''What’s the matter, Arthur?” I ask.

''Nothing really. I’m just having a bad morning.’’ He gestures down to just below his crotch where a few drops of liquid have appeared involuntarily. ''You can’t go from being a Royal Marine to this,” he says.

Then the Marines spirit kicks in. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll be fine by this afternoon. And I’m going to make those Paralympics in London 2012. You just watch."